


dead man walking

by mnemememory



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Depression, Gen, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-01
Updated: 2018-09-01
Packaged: 2019-07-05 09:12:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15860643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mnemememory/pseuds/mnemememory
Summary: For as long as Vax has known life, he has also known that he will die.(or; the twins, pre-vox machina)





	dead man walking

...

...

**dead man walking**

...

...

He is a dead thing, crawling out of its grave to grovel in the blistering sunlight.

Vax breathes in and out, steadies his lungs and reminds his heart to beat in his chest. _Keep going_ , he tells himself. _Just a few more steps, just a little bit longer –_

For as long as Vax has known life, he has also known that he will die.

It’s a cold kind of knowing, one that sinks deep into his bones and leaves his flesh chilled from the inside out. Corpse-cold, is how Vex had described him with thinly-veiled hysteria their first night away from walls. That’s always kind of stuck. Running away will never be a mistake, not from this, not for as long as Vax will live. He knows this.

He wonders how long Vex will survive on her own.

Vax watches his sister, watches her pull back a bow and stick an arrow one hundred and fifty paces away, dead on centre. Her smirk is wild and the slope of her shoulders is carefree, is whole, is unburdened. They are twin stars orbiting a shared space, and Vax would never wish her any kind of loneliness.

“You can talk to me, you know,” she says, tucked tight to his side as they brave against the frozen winter night. It’s just the two of them, huddled against a tree and staring to the sky as snow drifts down, down, down. Vax’s feet are cold.

_I can always talk to you_ , Vax says, and he hugs her tighter.

“Something’s bothering you,” she says. “I want to know what it is.”

Shivering together, Vax wants to know what’s bothering him, as well. It’s not the cold. They’ve been cold before. It’s not the lack of a roof, or the constant shape of hunger gnawing at their throats. They’ve been hungry before.

(Maybe it’s this: broken roof-tiles and scorched walls, charcoal and ash crunching under step as they–)

But it’s sluggish, his thoughts. He thinks, at first: hypothermia. But that doesn’t fit. The slowness isn’t physical. If he tries (if he tries), he can move as quick as he ever could. Faster, even. If he tries.

Vex watches him with narrow eyes and shoots arrows into small things for them to eat. Vax watches back as she skins them with brutal efficiency, as her hands (his hands) (her hands) work away at the skin and leave nothing but strips of bloody flesh, something edible to roast over the open fire. Vax watches, and he wonders if he will ever fit into these snow-dappled trees and the cold, wet thickness of the underbrush. He doubts it. For all Vex shares his face (for all he shares her face), they have ever been strange to the other’s interests.

_I’m going to the city_ , he announces one day, when the fire is banked low and the snow has melted enough to see new growth poking up through the stony ground. _I need to do something_.

Vex sits and stares at him, small in a way he has never seen her, cheeks flushed with shallow heat and blow staining the tips of her fingers. Vax thinks that she can survive anything. Even losing him.

She doesn’t say anything, not for a long time. They finish the rabbit and wash they camp away and climb a tree to wait out the cold. They don’t have any tents, because they hadn’t thought that far ahead, all those weeks ago. Just themselves, and a shared blanket. He will leave it with her, when he eventually does leave.

“I’m coming with you,” Vex says, finally.

_No_ , Vax says. _I need this for myself_.

…

…

He dreams of his mother, dead.

He dreams of his sister, dead.

(He has never, not once, dreamed of his father).

…

…

Life without Vex is a slow, thick slog through molasses air. Every breath is an effort. There are days when Vax wants nothing more than to collapse onto the ground and never wake up.

Except that’s not true, because life with Vex is exhausting in its own way. It’s always been a sticking thing at the back of his mind, a potential for fatigue. Maybe it’s more pronounced here, with Vex outside the city limits and the darkened shadow of tall buildings blotting out the sun. Vax makes the wrong kind of friends and finds the right kind of skills and he pushes through, keeps pushing through. _Breathe_ , he reminds himself.

“You’ve got potential,” someone says. “You’re gonna go places.”

Vax thinks that’s funny. He’s never felt so lost in his entire life.                                                                                        

(There’s an urge, see – a crazy, insane, terrible urge that says: _Kill the dragon, kill the dragon, kill the dragon –_

But if he listens to it, if he listens to the voice in his head and Vex’s voice mirrored in his ears (her ears) (his ears), he will go insane. The dragon is so far out of his realm of existence that it is a useless goal, a stitched-up scar that festers under smooth skin. Let Vex deal with dragons. Vax will pick locks and knife anyone who looks at his sister wrong).

…

…

Twelve, and scared. So scared.

“This isn’t happening,” Vex says at his side, staring at their own little ruin of a world. “This isn’t happening.”

Vax doesn’t say anything, doesn’t do anything. Just stands there and looks at an empty, broken shell of a house and feels something splinter somewhere deep inside him. Vex is crying, somewhere far and distant. That scares him. He reaches out with instinctual panic, wrapping a hand around her wrist. She’s so far away. She feels so far away.

_Don’t leave me_ , Vax wants to say, wants to gasp, wants to scream. There’s no air left in his lungs. As a single thing, they collapse together to their knees and shiver in the ashen remains of whatever freedom they could have had.

“Be good to your father,” is what she had said, the last time they had seen her. Pale and shaking and sick, so sick. “I expect you to be on your best behaviour.”

_I don’t want to go_ , Vax said. Vex had nodded her head in firm, silent agreement, braid bobbing up and down. _Please don’t make us go_.

There was a man outside, well dressed. Too fine for their parts. He had come to the door with a blank smile and sharp eyes, and Vax had wanted to bite him. He would have, too, if their mother hadn’t looked so shaken.

“Be good,” their mother said. And that’s all there was.

…

…

( _Be good_ , she says, over and over and over –

Vax sees her, sometimes, skin blistered and split. He sees her down in the tunnels, down in the sewers, with the filth and the scum of the earth scraping raw at his edges. He turns away from a broken lock and she’s there, dead and pale and staring.

_Be good_ , she says, when Vax puts a knife into someone’s throat and pulls it back. _Be good_ , she says, blood spattering to the ground.

Vax curls tight to his sister and prays for a dreamless sleep).

…

…

_I will die for you_ , Vax promises.

Somewhere along the line, it morphs, the words stretching out of his mouth and wrapping around his throat. _I will die for you_ , Vax promises, Vax predicts.

(a flash of green light –)

“Don’t be ridiculous, darling,” Vex says. “I don’t want you to die for me.”

_I will do anything to keep you safe_ , he says instead, when the cornered look in her eyes reminds him too much of a small bear-cub, half-hidden in Vex’s shirt and hungry for something more than food.

She reaches out to cup his cheek, a face so akin to his own morphed into something almost holy. “I know,” she says. “And I would do the same for you.”

The thought sticks.

_Please don’t_ , he wants to say. _Please, please don’t. don’t die for me. not you. I couldn’t bare it._

…

…

They will meet so many amazing people.

…

…

Like this, she looks dead.

Vax closes his eyes, but it doesn’t help. No matter how he looks at it – no matter how he imagines it – his sister sleeps with the grace of a corpse. Silent breathing, subtle movement; her face pressed to the ground and her hand splayed out over her bedroll, as if –

Vax curls his hands into his palms and stares up and out. He’s confident that there is no one here, in the barren wasteland surrounding them. The stars stare down at him in cold comfort. He finds himself drawing patterns with his eyes, searching for a face – for any face – but everything is clouded, muted.

He looks at his sister, and his chest aches.

_You are alive_ , he whispers to himself, and tries to hard to believe it. There isn’t a single thing he wouldn’t do for his sister, not anything. But sometimes, breathing seems a little more than he can handle.

…

…

They will meet _so many_ amazing people.

…

…

Vax will die. It’s a certainty, mapped out by the will of the gods. For as long as he’s been alive, for as long as he has drawn breath into his starved lungs, Vax has known his fate.

He will make sure that his sister can live forever.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for theclockistickingwrite on tumblr, who inspired me to finish this. It's not the best, but I hope you like it <3
> 
>  
> 
> I am so close to finishing Campaign 1, you guys, and I am in So Much pain.


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